Despite earning a high salary in cabinet, former finance minister Jim Flaherty had a comparatively modest net worth when he died in April, court documents show.

Probate records filed in court in Oshawa, Ont. in early May, a month after Flaherty died of a heart attack, list the total value of his assets at $989,045.

These do not include real estate he co-owned with his wife, Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP Christine Elliott, or any life insurance or shared pension benefits payable to her.

When Flaherty resigned as finance minister, a post that paid $242,000 annually, many speculated that his ongoing health issues with a chronic skin condition were the motivation for leaving a job he’d held since 2006.

Flaherty never confirmed this, however, and after his death from a heart attack at age 64, friends said he had been considering offers in the private sector, where he would have likely commanded a substantially higher salary than he earned in government.

That Flaherty’s assets totalled less than $1 million suggests this departure from politics was partly motivated by a desire to increase his earnings in the last years of his career, after spending 19 years in public service, and leaving a larger inheritance to his three sons.

He former chief of staff, Kevin McCarthy, told the Canadian Press in April that Flaherty had talked for years about making money in the private sector. “I truly believe that’s why he stepped down, it wasn’t health reasons.”

The probate forms do not detail specific assets, but part of the $669,000 in non-real estate assets likely represents proceeds from the sale of shares of his former law firm, Flaherty, Dow, Elliot & McCarthy.

He and his wife sold their stakes in the Whitby-based firm last September.

Elliott, who was also his former his law partner and acted as executor of his estate, likely chose to have his will probated – given court approval – to make it easier to manage these funds. She is the sole beneficiary listed in his will, though it includes provisions to share his estate with his children if she had died before he did.

The probate records also say Flaherty alone owned $320,045 in real estate, possibly the condominium in Ottawa’s Byward Market where he died.

In the conflict-of-interest declarations he was required to file as a cabinet minster and MP, Flaherty listed a one-third ownership in a numbered Ontario corporation that owned the former Whitby public library building his law firm occupied. He also reported holding RRSPs through a blind trust.

As an Ontario MPP, Elliott was required to provide a more detailed disclosure of her financial interests. Her last report, filed in 2013, listed ownership of shares in the Bank of Nova Scotia, Leons Furniture Ltd., Ann Taylor Stores Corp., BCE Inc., and Pengrowth Energy Corporation.

The probated will was signed by Flaherty in 1996, when he was an MPP in Mike Harris’s Ontario provincial government. It lists Elliott’s sister, Laura Elliott, and her spouse, Leo Plue, as guardians of their three children. Plue is the executive director of the Abilities Centre, a Whitby sports and fitness facility that Flaherty championed.